Why It Helps To Remember What It Felt Like To Be A Kid: Parenting Tips For Big Emotions
Last Saturday I stood in the checkout line of my local grocery store, my 7-year-old Lila splayed against my leg sobbing so hard her snot soaked through my sweatpants. I’d just told her no to the neon gummy bears stacked by the register—we’d already picked out granola bars and a pack of cookies for the week, and I wasn’t adding another $4 bag of candy to the bill. A woman behind me, probably in her 60s with a canvas tote full of produce, leaned forward and smiled, not the judgmental tight smile I’m used to from strangers when my kid has a public meltdown. “I used to do this exact thing to my mom,” she said. “I still remember how badly I wanted those pink lemonade drops once. I truly thought my whole week would be ruined if I didn’t get them.”
I stood there, one hand on my credit card and the other resting on Lila’s shaking back, and suddenly I was 10 years old again, standing in the shoe aisle of the old Kmart down the road, begging my mom for a pair of glittery jelly shoes every girl at my day camp was wearing that summer. She’d checked her wallet, shaken her head, and said we couldn’t afford them that trip, we’d come back next payday. I’d thrown a fit right there, hot tears running down my face, convinced I’d be the only kid without them, that everyone would laugh at my plain old sneakers and I’d never make any friends. I hadn’t thought about that memory in 25 years, but it popped right up, clear as day. That’s when it hit me: I spend so much time being “the parent” that I forget I used to be the kid, too.
A month before that, my 10-year-old Jax spent two weeks building a baking soda volcano for his science class. He cut the cardboard, mixed the paper mache, painted the whole thing bright red with a black tip, and insisted on adding cotton ball “smoke” sticking out of the top. The night before it was due, he walked out of his room, dropped it on his bed, and said he wasn’t turning it in. My first reaction was frustration. We’d spent $10 on extra baking soda and paint, he’d stayed up two nights in a row gluing, what was the big deal? I started to say what all parents say: “You worked so hard, you can’t just quit now.” But before the words came out, I remembered being 11, standing in the school office begging the nurse to call my mom because I couldn’t do the poetry reading I’d practiced for a month. My mom had been annoyed when she picked me up, said I was being silly, I’d worked so hard why would I throw it away. I never told her I was convinced I’d forget all my lines, trip over my own feet on the stage, and every kid in my class would think I was stupid. That twist of panic in my stomach still felt familiar, even after 20 years.
So instead of pushing Jax, I sat down next to him on his bed and said, “I remember when I worked really hard on something, and I was too scared to let anyone see it. Are you worried people will make fun of your volcano?” He nodded immediately, and said his friend had laughed at the lumpy paint on the side the day before, and he didn’t want everyone in class to see it. That’s the thing: when you don’t remember what it felt like, you think the behavior is the whole story. He’s being stubborn. He’s throwing away his work for no reason. When you do remember, you can see the feeling under the behavior, the same feeling you had once.
This isn’t about giving in to every demand, or letting your kid skip every assignment that scares them. It’s about small, concrete shifts that take almost no extra effort, that change the whole interaction. First, when you feel your temper rising, pause for 10 seconds and pull up any old memory of a time you felt that same big feeling as a kid. It doesn’t have to match the situation exactly. If your kid is melting down over a broken crayon, you can pull up the memory of when you broke your favorite Christmas ornament and cried, instead of immediately thinking “it’s just a crayon, calm down.”
Then, say one small line to name that: instead of “it’s not that big of a deal,” which just makes your kid feel like their feelings don’t matter, you can say “I remember when something like this happened to me, and it felt terrible.” That’s it. You don’t have to give a big speech, you don’t have to fix it right away. When I said that to Lila in the checkout line, she just nodded, stopped sobbing after a minute, and held my hand on the way out. I still didn’t buy the gummy bears, but the meltdown ended 10 minutes faster than it usually does, because she didn’t have to fight me to get her feelings recognized.
Another small thing I do now: I add 5 extra minutes to our morning routine for the small things that only matter to them. If they’re panicking over a lost hoodie or a broken hair tie, I don’t rush them immediately. I remember how much that small thing felt like everything when I was their age, and 5 extra minutes never ruined anyone’s day. A late slip once a month is way better than making them feel like their panic is stupid.
I still forget, more often than I’d like to admit. Last week I snapped at Jax for taking 10 minutes to find his baseball glove before practice, and I only remembered my own panic over losing my soccer cleats before a game when I was 12 after I’d already raised my voice. I apologized afterwards, and that’s okay—you don’t have to do this perfectly. This isn’t about raising perfect kids or being a perfect parent. It’s just about remembering that the people we’re raising are people, with the same big messy feelings we had when we were their age, once upon a time. Right now, that small pause, that one line, is working for us more often than not. Some days are still messy, some meltdowns still go on too long, but it’s a start.
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